The real stories from inside the F1 paddock

Let’s keep things sensible

Well, blow me down. Here I am coming to Vijay Mallya’s defence having seen stories that are starting to appear to suggest that the Force India boss is “on the run from Indian authorities after an arrest warrant was issued”. This is not true at all. No arrest warrant has been issued. Mallya may not be in India, but this does not mean he is on the run. Mallya said in a statement on Sunday that he had no intention of absconding from the country, and that he has been trying to reach a settlement with the consortium of 17 banks which have been leading the fight against him. There are a number of other legal activities going on with regard to his crumbling empire, but none of them involve arrest warrants.

Mallya left India last Wednesday (March 2) and is believed to be in the UK, where it is understood that he is living in a large house near Tewin, a village just outside Welwyn Garden City, in Hertfordshire.

All that has actually happened is that the Supreme Court has issued notice to Mallya of a plea being made against him and has asked him to respond to the notice in the next two weeks. The notice will be served to him by way of his official email address as a member of India’s upper house of the Parliament of India (lest we forget he is also a politician). It will also he served through the Indian high commission at London and through his legal counsel. In other words, it is going to be hard to argue that he did not get the message.

He (VM) is probably fairly relaxed as according to the Indian Attorney-general Mukul Rohatgi his overseas assets are comfortably in excess of what is owed to the banks. So it appears just to be a case of horse trading just how much security was and wasn’t pledged to cover the airline’s borrowings. Accountants and lawyers sound like the winners here.